Healing the Wounds of War Downtown

Healing the Wounds of War Downtown
Tribeca Trib - New York,NY,USA

By Carl Glassman
POSTED JANURARY 2, 2009


One flight up, just above the hubbub of lower Broadway, men and women who have gone to war come to seek peace.

There, behind closed doors and amid wall maps and memorabilia of American conflicts, counselors help to dress the emotional wounds of vets, some untreated for more than 40 years.

The Vet Center, at 32 Broadway, is where combat veterans—many of whom live or work Downtown—are provided with free counseling. One of two centers in Manhattan and more than 200 around the country, it is also a treatment center for victims of sexual trauma in the military.

In the soothing dimness of her office, Michelle Mullany, 34, a social worker and former Marine, sees many of those veterans.

“A lot of them come with a sense of guilt, remorse, questioning of authority, questioning of their reason for doing what they did in combat,” said Mullany, who heads a team of four counselors, all vets. “They are looking for a place where they can talk about that openly and not feel judged.”

Last month, the Trib talked to Iraq and Vietnam combat veterans about the Vet Center, and what it means to those whose lives are scarred by war.

“Once you go through an experience like [combat] you are permanently changed,” said Iraq war vet Eduard H.R. Gluck, a Worth Street resident and photojournalist who receives counseling at the Vet Center. “But you don’t have to allow it to change you just in a negative way. You have to work towards trying to find balance and peace.”

The Vet Center program began in 1979, a recognition by the government that Vietnam veterans still faced adjustment problems years after the war had ended.

Even today, Vietnam veterans are two-thirds of the clients coming to the Manhattan center. But an increasing number of Iraq war vets are finding their way there as well.

Luis Montalvan, discharged in September 2007 after two tours in Iraq, describes himself as having “the whole gamut” of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) symptoms: difficulty leaving his apartment, hypervigilence in public places, anxiety, panic attacks and flashbacks. This, in addition to physical wounds that he is reluctant to discuss—including a stabbing, traumatic brain injury and three fractured vertebrae.

The Veterans Administration Health Center in Brooklyn was his first stop after returning home. Unhappy with the counseling there, after eight months he switched to the Vet Center.

“Like night and day,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like it’s an us-against-them mentality, a sterile approach to dealing with mental health.”

“If I didn’t get therapy,” added Montalvan, 35, now a graduate journalism student at Columbia University, “I would be sadly locked away in my apartment, not able to function.”

Many combat vets find it difficult to share their experiences. Mullany said she reassures her clients that she can “hold” their painful emotions, that she has the training and her own emotional outlets to handle it.

“I’m going down to that dark place with you, to hold your hand, to allow you to sit with me and feel safe with me,” she said she tells them.

“Safety is the number one thing in treating trauma,” Mullany said. “Feeling safe in the world.”

John Dugan, 27, is a former Marine infantryman whose fresh face and gentle presence bely the awful memories and deep sorrows he carries with him from combat in Iraq.

Now a waiter at two Downtown restaurants, Dugan was one of three two-man teams of Marines to first enter Fallujah in what was to be one of the bloodiest battles of the war. These days he fights the symptoms of PTSD that are common among vets seeking help at the center, including sleeplessness, anger, depression and guilt.

“Better people who lived their lives a lot different than I did died and they really shouldn’t have,” said Dugan.

Near the end of his tour, Dugan was boarding a helicopter bound for the next mission, to guard polling stations during the nation’s elections.

“I followed my lieutenant getting on to the helicopter. He turns around and tells me, ‘This is too full. Go to the next one.’ They’re in the air 15 minutes, then the helicopter crashes and they’re all dead.”


“Thirty-one guys, like that,” he adds, snapping his fingers. “The guys would have been at my f---ing wedding.”

Some 40 years ago Doug Fristoe, now 62 and a resident of Independence Plaza in Tribeca, needed that same hope. His life would have taken a different course, he said, if a Vet Center had been around after he fought in the jungles of Vietnam, where friends died and he was seriously wounded.

There were failed marriages, depression, difficulty focusing on the job and a bankruptcy. It was only during a visit to a VA hospital, after losing his health insurance, that he was finally tested for PTSD, and scored high.

At the Vet Center, Fistoe receives individual counseling and attends group sessions with fellow Vietnam vets.

“It’s put me back in focus and helped me a lot,” said Fristoe. “Tell these kids from Iraq and Afghanistan to take advantage of it, even if they think they don’t need help.”

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